Pentagon Papers

Ben Bradlee, executive editor of The Washington Post from 1968 to 1991, has died. He was 93. Bradlee oversaw coverage of the Watergate scandal by reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and defied the government by publishing the Pentagon Papers.

On this day in 1971, The New York Times began to publish sections of the Pentagon Papers, an in-depth Defense Department review of American military and political involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967.